Musashino

Date:: 1928
Medium:: Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Format:: Oban
Dimensions:: 26.9 × 41 cm
Publisher:: Yoshida Studio
Source:: Minneapolis Institute of Art

Typical Price

This 1920s print from the heart of Yoshida's jizuri period represents his mature shin-hanga technique. Standard jizuri prints of Japanese landscapes cluster around $2,149 (1stDibs dealer benchmark). The jizuri seal — indicating Yoshida personally supervised printing — is the single most important value driver, typically doubling the price over non-jizuri lifetime impressions.

Jizuri (artist-supervised) seal: $1,500–$4,000
Studio edition (no jizuri): $800–$2,000
Posthumous/family workshop reprint: $300–$800

Description

Musashino refers to the broad plain that stretches west of Tokyo, historically celebrated in Japanese poetry and literature for its sweeping views, autumn grasses, and the quality of its light. Yoshida's 1928 print depicts the plain in a mode that synthesizes landscape painting traditions — the open sky and wide horizon recall Western landscape conventions while the compositional restraint and sensitivity to atmospheric mood remain firmly grounded in Japanese aesthetics. It is a meditation on a landscape that was already partly mythological, the real Musashino filtered through centuries of literary association.